The history of the Redfern Mail Exchange is one of poor industrial relations. By 1969, the PMG had commissioned an internal investigation which concluded:
 "It is the considered view of the Committee that the criticism levelled against the letter coding system by the Supervising officers and representatives of the APWU have been over-emphasized. The Committee recognises that some problems are still being encountered with the operation of the system but many of these can be traced back to the human element." 

The industrial turmoil can be traced back to the pre-installation days when the APWU raised its concern about the lack of consultation by the PMG on the introduction of the coding desks which it (the APWU) assumed would be manned by Mail Officers.

In late 1965 at a conference with the APWU, the Postal Overseer's Union, the Administrative and Clerical Officers' Association and the Federal Public Service Assistant's Association, the Director General of the PMG announced its plans that the operators of the coding machines would be designated Coding Machinists (Female) with female rates of pay and junior female rates to allow girls of fifteen years of age to be recruited and trained. The PMG equated the work to that of punch card operators which attracted much lower rates of pay than Mail Officers.

 The APWU reacted strongly with the expected response that the work was the province of its members, the pay rate must be that of Mail Officer and, if females were employed, they should receive male rates of pay. (This was before the introduction of equal pay for women in the Commonwealth Public Service.) 
When referred to the Public Service Arbitrator, he decided to create a new classification of Mail Officer (Coding) which attracted a lower rate of pay than other Mail Officers.
 

By 1969, the PMG was so concerned about the failure of the Sydney Mail Exchange to meet its performance targets that it commissioned a three man team to investigate. This task took three months.   When completed, its recommendations could be summarised under the following groups:

"Staff" work practice changes - 2
Training shortfalls - 2
Change in internal deadlines - 3
Transfer of work to other Post Offices - 5
Improved staff/management consultation - 5
"System" work practice changes - 9 

We can therefore see that the problems were not equipment orientated but management problems with a high union/ industrial content.
 

Already the centralised concept was being reversed with some presorting being carried out at feeder post offices and bulk mails for other destinations were being allowed to bypass the exchange or pass through unopened.

The staff relationships were strained with supervisors reluctant to move operative staff to match work peaks, being unable to restrain "tea-breaks", or restrict "wash-up" times before roster end to reasonable limits. 

It is worth looking at a few statistics to gain an impression of the size of the man-management task in the 1960's:
Floor area - 50 100 sq m,
Mail Officers - 2400 (approx)
Mail Officers (Coding) - 245
Canteen seating capacity - 1200 

In the early 1970’s, several industrial disputes involved the Redfern Exchange. Some were confined to local issues and other involved issues elsewhere but were played out at Redfern due to the effect that Redfern could have on paralysing the State and National mail.

In the same period, NSW mail exchanges were being equipped with the Toshiba high speed letter preparation lines at a cost of some $4.3 million. The expansion of this project to cover all other States is the basis of the National Letter Sorting Project covered in detail in Chapter 9.

Extracted from Postal Mechanisation in Australia by Ken Sparks. Out of print but scanned copy available on CD ROM from the stamps AU Shop.